If You Could Have Any Super Power, What Would It Be?

I love to ask people this question. It allows me to understand their creative and philosophical perspective while getting to know a little bit more about them as an individual.

I used to do a lot if interviewing for a sales and marketing firm, and this was a question I would ask every candidate I interviewed. It was a fun way to dig into the psyche of the applicant while disarming them and making the conversation instantly interesting.

It was always interesting to watch them react because it is not a question anyone expects to get asked during a job interview. It is not something you prepare for, and definitely not a question you expect to answer at an interview for a sales job.

That’s What Makes It A Great Question

If asking someone where they want to be in 5 years is a typical interview question, then asking them about an imaginary super power is a super-question.

It allows me to immediately gauge how they react to the unknown.

It allows me to understand how quickly they can run through their creative decision making process as well as letting me see how creative they can actually be.

Letting them pick a a super power is never enough though. I always follow up by asking why they want that particular superpower.

The Beauty Of This Question Is Always In The Why…

I am not interviewing you for a job, but I am challenging you with the same question. If you could pick a superpower, what would it be? What would you do with it?

Why would you pick that superpower?

Would you use your power for good or evil? Do you want to fly so that you can see the world, or do you want to be invisible so you can sneak into the girls locker room undetected?

I know you aren’t all out there thinking about saving the world with your super powers so be honest with yourself. You know you have those dark thoughts inside of you. The ones that make you do all the shit you hate about yourself. The ones that you cannot control at times, even though you mostly do.

No sense in lying here. It is not like your job depends on it. And we are just thinking in our own heads, so why lie?

Me? I think about stopping time so I can rob a bank.

I think about it all the time.

I probably think about robbing banks more than anyone should. I have imagined detailed get-away plans, high-speed chases, and complicated cons for how to maximize the score and diminish the potential of failure.

That doesn’t mean it will ever happen. It doesn’t mean I am going to ever execute the plan but there is something that comes with understanding that part of yourself that is vital to claiming your real world super power.

Understanding and embracing this side of my brain has allowed me to understand my thought process It has allowed me to understand myself. My true self. Not the pretend me that I so often project to the world.

Is This Dude Really Talking About Superpowers?

I meet people with real life super powers every day.

I even see people who think they are average when reality is that they have just not yet discovered what the extent of their true super powers really are. Unable to understand that we all have a super power hidden inside us. Something we each have to discover on our own.

Let Me Explain

Have you ever met anyone with real life superpowers? Someone who seemed to be bullet-proof, always on the right side of fortune and amazingly efficient in their daily tasks. Never sad, hurt, angry or annoyed. Just calm, alert, prepared, and able to adapt to anything that comes their way.

The guy that always has the right answer, always knows what to do next. Ready at a moment’s notice, to run off and fight the villains of life.

The guy that gets all the girls. The girl who owns the sales floor, the quarterback who makes all the throws…

You look at these people and wonder how they do it, how they get it all done. How do they outperform you at work, on the court, in the gym and at life in general?

For some reason, no matter how nice you are and how good you live you just can’t seem to crawl out from under your rock.

You feel like no matter how hard you try or how good you become at whatever you do there will always be someone better than you so you do not push. You do not strive for excellence.

You think the world is always one step ahead and always out of reach.

You think that the system is holding you down so “why bother?”.

Well… I say “fuck that”! I say “forget about those people and quit comparing yourself to them”.

Quit thinking that anything in life is fair, or supposed to be easy. Quit thinking that you will be successful, simply because you are a good person or because you deserve it.

Quit thinking anyone owes you anything, should buy you a present, do something for you or even care about how you feel.

It is up to you to decide when, where, why, and how you take off the tie, rip open your shirt and strip down to your tights, because until you can look at yourself in the mirror and love what you see you will never have a chance at being happy.

No one can ever truly love you because if you do not love yourself, they will never have a chance to love you. They will have fallen in love with your facade and when it vanishes, so will they.

Shame On You…

For holding other people up as more than human.

For thinking that you are not capable of doing everything you dream you can do. Everything you know you can do. From unleashing the monster inside you. The monster that the world might hate but you might love.

The monster you feel inside of you. Stirring. Waiting for you to set it free. Begging you to give in and let it help you become the person you always wanted to be.

For thinking that because someone has a little more money than you or a little more opportunity handed to them here and there that they are somehow better than you. For giving up hope in the fact that you can go and create value in this world and change your circumstance.

For forgetting that this is still America.

For forgetting that this is still a place where risk, hard work and determination are still rewarded. That this is a place where the underdog always has a chance and where the little guy is always the crowd favorite.

I don’t care what color you are or where you come from, if you wake up each day and bust your ass for something you believe in then no one can stand in your way.

You can still go out and make a difference in your own life and the lives of the people around you.

You can go be anyone, or anything, you want to be; so quit acting like a little bitch and grab your damn cape!

The Mutations

I can’t tell you where to find your super power or what specifically it is but I can guide you with examples of super powers I have encountered in this game called life.

When you finally discover your super power you will wonder what the heck took you so long and how you ever got along without it.

Control Time

No one is punctual anymore. Seriously… whats up with that?

It used to be a social taboo to show up late and now it seems that being late is the norm.

Some of my friends call it BPT which stands for Black People Time but we used to joke about Puerto Ricans always being late long before I found out what that was. My dad (born Puerto Rican) was adamant about us being on time. He used to tell me how much he hated people being late, especially other Latin people. It was a matter of pride. It was a matter of him honoring his word. That always struck a chord with me and has stayed with me to this date.

No matter what your race or what your excuse, being late is something you CAN control. Don’t give me the “I just can’t help it” excuse, because you and I both know it’s full of shit.

I get it. You slept in, forgot, or whatever but just fess up. We all do it. Don’t make a habit of it and make an effort to maximize the time you do spend working on your dream as well as for others.

And for gods sake, when you are with someone, make them feel like you are with them. Not in another galaxy, on your computer or on your phone. I know we can all say amen to that!

Fly:

So many people restrict their ability to succeed in life by throwing hurdles in front of themselves.

We all know someone like this; I am sure of it. That person who has all the potential in the world but never seems to be doing anything with it.

The person who always has an excuse for why things are not going their way. Maybe they need to “go back to school” or they “need an investor to fund their idea”.

These people will never fly because they are always looking at things from a negative light. They are always looking for reasons why something will not work as opposed to looking for the things that will work.

If you want to fly, you have to look for opportunities. You have to look for opportunities to try as opposed to focusing on the reasons why you will fail. Just go do something. Google it. YouTube it. Learn a new skill. Pick up a new hobby. Create something from scratch.

You will be amazed at what you can learn for free these days and if you really want to fly, then set yourself free. Don’t listen to the people around you who are weighed down with the same self imposed constraints that you are trying to leave behind.

Become A Shape Shifter:

The easiest things to break in life are rigid. Think glass vs Plexiglas. Why do you think they put rebar in concrete? So that the structure can flex and not crumble. It adds flexibility to reinforce the concrete.

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” Bruce Lee

Being flexible in life allows you to change and adapt. As an individual, you have something that the large organizations can never have; the ability to change strategies and turn on a dime. With this skill you can learn, adapt, perform and grow on the fly. Always one step ahead of everyone else.

Become Bullet-proof:

Walk free in the world, by becoming comfortable with your flaws.

Quit hiding them from yourself and your friends.

Quit pretending you are perfect and then you can finally quit expecting the world to see you that way.

We give the people around us so much power over our lives by letting their opinions influence our decision, buying behaviors, sexual experiences and personal relationships. Learn to stand up for yourself. Learn to think for yourself.

Learn to love yourself because without that no one can ever love you. Sure you can try and it will feel good for a while but it always comes out. We always crack.

You know what I am talking about. Maybe you are there right now. Maybe you feel like a house of cards, waiting for the whole thing to come crumbling down. Waiting for the straw that breaks the camels back.

Maybe you cant see it. Maybe you are clueless to the possibility of collapse, which is the worst of all possibilities, but be warned, the world is trying to break you.

The world will put you in the corner and beat on you until you tap out or come out swinging.

There is no referee. There is no bell; no buzzer to save you from this beat down.

But you can fight back. You don’t have to just sit there and take it.

You can protect yourself. You can grab a shield and defend against the constant attack of your self worth.

Come On Man, Get Real!

I know that humans will probably never (not in my lifetime at least) be able to shape-shift, fly independently, travel through, or control time.

I just want you to see that more often than not, success comes through hard work and dedication. Not luck. Not government, not Jesus, not Allah and not your mamma!

It is up to you!

Why wouldn’t you want to achieve something with your life. Why shouldn’t you have dreams and goals? Why shouldn’t you learn how to live with nothing in order to understand the value of having it all.

Being given nice things might feel good and living in wealth is definitely appealing but I have to imagine that creating wealth is much more fulfilling. I have to believe that building something for yourself, something that you can call your own has to be exponentially more rewarding.

It’s Never The Idea; It’s The Execution

Going out and setting your mind to something and then getting it done is definitely something to get excited about. It is something you should be rewarded for. Who are we to set a cap on that reward?

Who are we to judge anyone else for what they have; to pretend like we know what it took for them to get it.

Who are we to covet their possessions; to force upon them your perception of what a fair share should be when you are unwilling to contribute any share at all.

Why not use their success as inspiration towards the next level of success in whatever it is that defines the boundaries of your life.

To conquer one thing in life and then pick something else. And then something else. And on and on, until you are a transformer of talent. A candidate so unemployable that you have to start your own company.

Because you will always feel undervalued when you finally discover what you’re actually worth.

So What Are You Waiting For?

You never know what you might inspire someone to do if you just did a little more yourself.

If you stopped worrying about the rest of the world and just worried about you.

You might just use one of your super powers to save someones life. One day at a time.

You might just be the very reason why someone else is living their life, so how dare you give up on yours?

Slap people through the internet…teleport would be the smarter way to word that though, more benefits, but just a hand coming out of your computer screen and slapping the shit out of you would be amazing. Fly is usually my number 1 but I guess I could just put on one of those squirrel suits and teleport real high, still be pretty sweet.

I can empathize with that one for sure. Sometimes I would love to reach through the computer screen and “Slap the shit out of someone” but alas, I’ll have to keep using my words instead.

I agree with flying as a pretty kick ass power but I always default back to time travel. What need would there be to fly if you can control time. Every time I have the argument in my head, time travel wins!

Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts and for your recent comments on my other articles.

Well, I think it depends on the opinions of some users. Maybe some people just don’t want an OP power like Time Manipulation or even better, Reality Manipulation, or much “better” Boundary Manipulation and for the creative ones that doesn’t want to be bother to be influenced by powers, Anti-Power. They do want to have a super power, but not a story breaking super power. Maybe some people want to search a challenge in having a super power that isn’t really as strong as the tier one powers, because they want to put their creative minds into it to make the super power they have in mind into an art.

TL;DR
I don’t know if you are familiar with the Superpower Wikia. But just in case, I will post this link on the comments so you can browse the powers and their categories if you didn’t know about this site already;):

Most of the powers on this wiki are also a huge inspiration for some stories and doujinshi’s writers and if you want to contribute a new power, feel free to do it. You can also discuss about the applications of a certain power, for example Time Manipulation. And some powers are really based on some mythologies that you can read if you want to study some of the Greece mythologies for example

Sorry that I post a second time. But for humans: Is the desire for power or even granted a special power not a weakness of humans? Even if there are superpowers to humans, humans will never stop with comparing which power is “better”. Is that also a message from you post?
One interesting point is the use of nootropics in colleges. Students there actually want the “power” to excel in class for whatever reason. But is the reason people want power so much, because of how unfair this world is?
What say if you are the one that only can give super powers to others (so you are not a user of a power, only a giver) or take the super powers from them and the superpowers you gave don’t have any negative effect to you? Will you not be the most “powerfull” human on Earth? This really reminds me of the Bible (I am not a believer though) and Lord of the Rings.

I get what you are saying. The point of the article was that there are people out there who will kick your ass and run you over if you let them. (Villains)

But that it does not have to be this way and that you can defend yourself against these people by developing your own superpower.

People want power because that is human nature. It is what has allowed us to survive for so long and evolve into what we are. Soon people will cross the line between humans and technology and at this point we will start to see real world superpowers.

We already have people who play god in this world. All I want to do is show the average person that they still have the opportunity to do something amazing too.

I think I would grow tired of seeing into the minds of other people. You can learn about the human mind plenty by studying psychology but I would be scared to look too deeply into the minds of others. We must be allowed to have some level of privacy so this would be the ultimate superpower.

Very much like the ability to control time. The difference is that controlling time would make you invincible and immortal. So I still think controlling time is better than controlling the mind. Humans have already proven that minds, especially that of the public, can be easily controlled.

controlling time for a human can be hard as how can you breath in a time frozen environment?:) The only air you can breath is the air that is touching you. I think Time Control can be strong, but it will require one secondary power. And there are ways that a mind power can beat (or defend) against a time manipulator. But I don’t really know about the “powerful” power except for omnipotence.

Freezing time would not eliminate atmosphere or the laws of physics. This is not the same as traveling at the speed of light, where time would stop. This is an imaginary super power. So you would just be frozen in that moment but I would be able to walk around the world and do as I please.

I didn’t say that freezing time will elimate the atmoshere, but if you are stopping time of objects in your environment, you also stop the time of every molecule around you. How can you inhale air if the air around you can’t move? Inhaling air is actually the process of making the pressure inside your lungs lower than the outside air pressure of your body. The molecules will be stuck in time-freeze. The law of physics still is in action. But I think you mean stopping the time of the buildings and people around you, but not the atmosphere. If you can do that, then there should be no problems.
But instant teleportation will actually be better if you are talking about transporting. If you freeze from only just your surrounding, and you want to go from Washington to Tokyo. Your default time is still running. Omnipresent is also better as you are actually everywhere at once, even in the time manipulator. So a part of an omnipresent person will still have the default time running. It stills depends on the setting though.

Thanks for the article. I am not sure if you will read this, but I will share what of my opinions. The superpower
I want really depends on my mood somehow. As I like all the superpowers that had been invented so I will just pick a list of superpowers that I have in my mind now.

One of the most underrated super power I’ve seen is omnilinguism (The power to know and speak all languages in the universe). At first someone will think this is a useless superpower for combat. But I know that what makes a superpower great isn’t how good you can use this super power in combat. In the setting where you have to use magical language to cast magic (like Harry Potter and Skyrim), omnilinguism can be one of the most powerfull superpower. But still in real life, you can use omnilinguism to communicate with all people and even understand all the programm language. So omnilinguism really is a great superpower that shouldn’t be underestimated.

Second is the (reactional evolution) power to adapt to all enviroment. You just can’t die or be hurt even in the most harsh condition. It’s like you have evolution in your control.
Third is the power to cover up existence of yourself and objects. This power really is great if you are working for an Intelligence Security departement as you can just cover secret data for the rest of the world and even in a world with superpower, information is one of the greatest power that you should protect.

Third is necromancy. No, I don’t like the revive a dead person with necromancy, but I really like necromancy, because of its medical application. You can revive a donor’s heart or dead tissues as like it wasn’t dead to begin with and use it on your patients. With necromancy you really can bring an evolution to medical science.

And last is the power to have a power that is based on the chemical and physical properties of the object you touch. So if you touch a tornado. You can strike someone with tornado. If you touch metal, you can be hard as metal and even conduct electricity. If you touch water, you can liquidfy and splash water to someone. This power really is like an Alchemist-power. You can use this for combat but also for any other practical usages. You just only have to be creative.

If martial arts fantasy are fair play, I can think of 2 powers. One being able to know Hokuto Shinken from Fist of the North Star. The art is only allowed to have one practitioner and they can essentially copy any art that they see. The art hits pressure points to destroy the opponent from within often with hilarious head exploding results.

The other would be psycho power that M.Bison from the Street Fighter series has. He can teleport, create balls of energy blasts, fly, control people’s minds and regenerate himself with the psycho drive and use other host bodies to unleash the full extent of his power.

Why?
Because these powers were often the most powerful in their respective series. I’ve always been attracted to bosses and those with “unbeatable” powers. Can’t explain why, but I’d love to get your take on it, lol.

No power is off limit. I am not familiar with the first one you described but it sounds interesting. I always say that I am a chameleon. I always say that the ability to adapt to your surroundings is a powerful superpower.

The ability to control peoples minds would be a super power that would be quite intimidating. I am not sure that I would want that as a power, nor am I sure I would I want anyone else to have it.

I actually think that this power exist to a certain extent and it is a big part of why learning parts of the sales process is important for everyone. Because we are susceptible to mental manipulations and we should all reinforce our defenses against this kind of attack.

And this is why I love this question. Because just as I think I have the perfect power someone comes along and gives me some new inspiration. Now, I still think from a pure power perspective controlling time would be the most powerful but I think about the mind power you would have to have in order to create multiple versions of yourself.

I’ve never had a problem controlling time, so from your examples, I’d have to say fly. This is a creatively written article. I have to ask though, if you don’t mind, do you have anything apart from this blog you’re working on? You seem to be really pushing for success and speaking like you’re on your way to soaring heights in some of your posts. Maybe it’s just your way of motivational writing?

Honestly, I do have some concepts I am working on and I have a consulting business but yes, I like to share my thoughts with the hope of inspiring others to chase their dreams.

I have come a long way over the last 5 years and that in itself is a considerable success. If you want to measure my success based in dollars in the bank then I have little to brag about but if you want to talk about the number of people I have inspired, lives I have touched and the freedom I am experiencing in life then I am wildly successful.

The money and notoriety will come later. Right now this is about trying something new, giving it my all and pushing the limits of my creative abilities.

No, it’s not all about money, though unfortunately, money has the loudest voice in our society. Success comes from within, if you live in the amazon, sleep under a tree, but you see yourself as successful and happy, then you are, regardless what other might think. In the end, it all depends on you and how you feel about yourself. Though I don’t 100% agree with all your posts, keep being controversial, and all the best on your journey!
Keep pushing your limits and what you can achieve will become limitless.

New here, great read! Good or bad you want the truth, so as I started to type immortality shared with my wife, I want the power to be in sync with her, thoughts feelings emotions pain seeing from her eyes ect…
As bad as it might sound deep down in side the world could be burning around us, but as long as she is cool im good.

Part of my thinks about wanting to be able to read someone’s thoughts or see into their heads but part of me thinks that would be hard to deal with. I have enough trouble managing the voices in my own head. Let alone the voices in someone else’s head.

Superpower to be a Neo from movie “Matrix”! In case you didn’t watched it, he can fly and pretty much fight more like sci-fi fighter.
One more superpower to mention, from movie “Click”, he can control his life with a remote, in short – controlling time.
But in that case i would get lost! In what time to live?

That’s more like a compilations of superpowers. I guess if we are making things up, you could become a Demigod. Then you could pretty much do whatever you want but the point if the experiment is to really focus on one thing. One specific power.

Since we only have the option of one, I’ll have to say some kind of Psychic Superpower. Psychometry comes to mind, so I can annihilate the enemy with just my brain. Although, now that I think about this some more, I sure would like to hog-tie some folks with Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth. I am not sure it qualifies as a super power, however, it’s one of those must-have-accessories for this gal.

Great article. I’d love to be able to teleport to anywhere in the world. As much as I love exploring foreign airports (duty freeeee) there is something about blinking and being anywhere in the world. But I suppose that is just the sort of thing out instant-gratification generation would say… lol

Nothing wrong with using your super power for occasional self gratification. What good is it to have amazing powers and not be able to enjoy them. Just try to think of what else you might do with it. How would you leave a mark on the world?

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